#jstor is definitely your friend

[agwitow]

What are your thoughts on these topics? 1.)How does nonbinary identity differ from transgender identity? 2.)Do LGBTQ-inclusive sex ed programs prevent homophobic harassment in schools? 3.)How does the medical establishment treat transgender people?

Hello Nonny,

Again, I'm not an expert on any of these. I'm a trash gremlin writer.

1) On a semantic level, nonbinary includes transgender as it refers to anything outside of the gender binary. On a practical level, being nonbinary or transgender or any other identity is for the individual to decide. If someone tells me they're nonbinary, cool. Then they're nonbinary. If they say they're trans, awesome. Then they're trans. If they told me one thing and then later change their mind, great! They know themselves better now and I'm happy for them.

2) I have done no research on this, so I do not know. I feel that would be the case as one of the ways to fight against bigotry and all sorts of -isms is to educate people.

3) Again, I've done no research on this, but even then I know that it varies wildly from place to place. There always seems to be a lot of negative news coming out of the US in regards to how trans people are treated, but even that varies based on state and city. And I'm not American, so... *shrug*

It's great that you're curious about these things, Nonny, but I recommend you try googling for news and journal articles on these topics. If you are part of an educational institution that has access to @jstor , I would recommend using them to do some research.

Best of luck on your journey of learning!

xoxo

[wisteriagoesvroom]

unnecessarily specific headcanons for college!AU f1 drivers, part 1

charles

- major: marine biology

- always asks you to save you a seat at the caf and watch his bag then disappears for an hour and a half. when you have to run to your next class you find him on the quad and he’s made four new friends and is playing football and is super apologetic that he forgot his bag. you only forgive him because he’s so charming

- dorm room is a bit of a disaster. sports and pop culture memorabilia everywhere with no particular regard for look or feel, it’s just vibes

- makes music in his free time tho is not above making people listen to his lofi mixes on ableton

- has a t shirt tan from always being out doing fieldwork

- doesn’t make a big deal about studying but is constantly on JSTOR and tops classes rankings all the time. knows the librarians on a first name basis. crosses over with max in a lecture and ends up debating him every lesson about some soil degradation minutiae that runs way beyond class time

- often forgets to call his family, but when they do speak, the conversations last hours

- flirts with anything that moves. knows he can cash in the relationship capital at some point but it’s not malicious, just strategic

- is close friends with Pierre. they constantly speak rapid fire French to each other and gossiping about people in front of them when they think nobody understands

- definitely gets caught by the local paper for climbing the historical bell tower on the last day before graduation

max

- major: geography

- writes a shockingly good first year thesis. so good that he fucks over the bell curve for everyone else and thus alienates most people

- blatantly abuses the open office hours to go argue with the profs about pedantic points from their seminars. they actually fear him and respect him in equal regard

- will talk about the geographies of war and peace in such unnecessary detail that most people at student parties know to avoid him so as not to get maxsplained at the fruit punch

- knows only how to make 5 dishes and keeps making the same few (one of them has potatoes and raisins in it. his dorm mates do not know how to feel).

- is all about efficiency. definitely abuses a 12-in-1 shampoo and this is a detail he will never live down even when everyone graduates. at one point he resorts to eating “prepacked food” until someone (probably his TA Daniel) points out that those are army rations that you normally heat up in like, the desert

- spots a statistical error in one of the papers in year end finals, and correctly challenges their prof wolff on it. prof wolff doesn’t like that one bit.

george

- major: finance

- head of student union and will not shut up about it

- won on a platform that de-emphasised radical politics in favour of “real hard hitting issues that affect our campus welfare” including alumni fundraising

- is in fact very close with the alumni. so much so they find him annoying but will still donate every time he asks them to open their pockets for better decor in the dorms or whatever

- will one day end up running the regional arm of a Fortune 500 investment bank, before he runs for political office because someone told him he couldn’t do it and he wanted to prove a point

- gets too drunk one day and ends up running half-clothed around the quad singing adele very off key. will pay a PR specialist a huge sum when he’s older to have this scrubbed from the internet

- his friend Alex teases him about his swottiness constantly. alex is not part of the student union but somehow everyone on campus knows him anyway and loves him

alex

- major: maths and statistics

- is such a nice dude that the cafeteria workers actually smuggle him secret (and more ethnic) food on the side

- will quietly put his hand up in a lecture and say “respectfully, this is why the combinatronics sequence should be…” and is usually right

- one of the very few members of the overwhelmingly white college campus who can dance, and meets his partner lily at the ballroom dance club or something. has waltzed with George when drunk too. (Alex leads. George is not really happy about it)

- keeps a running excel sheet of who wins the drinking games at the silverstone dorm, where the gang regularly meets

- got in on an aid scholarship and never brags about it. but everyone is aware and knows he is one of the best people ever.

- posts a lot of BeReals about his cat who he misses dearly

I could do more of these but i will stop for now because I don’t know who else wants to read these extremely self-indulgent brainrot thoughts 🤷🏻‍♀️

(i was self indulgent. part 2 here.)

[toobluebirdie]

The Apparition Creature Runes

This post is to organize the thought process the Eden’s Rest discord server went through trying to figure out what the runes in the Apparition drawing really mean.

I hope my explanation is clear enough to follow!

We went from casually wondering what the runes meant to realizing they spelled nothing, to trying to flip them upside down and realizing they still spelled nothing, to finding a tik tok that led down a new rabbit hole entirely.

The person in this tik tok talks about an article they found about medieval language. SMCEN was written as smœn (which is also written as smoen). 

Here’s the link to the article they were talking about in the tik tok: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43628078 You can only access the article if you have a subscription to jstor, whether through your school or otherwise, but the sample page here has the passage the tik tok is talking about. Trying to figure out the literary jargon hurt my head. It talks about “mamorian” and “mamra” (which come from the same root word) meaning “to be deep in thought about something” or “sleep.” Trying to clear up what the article was saying about “smoen” after that and connect it all together was hard but here’s what i got:

It seems to say that smœn is linked to the word smean, which is a variation of the Old English word smeagan.

From the Wikipedia entry for smeagan ( https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/smeagan#Old_English ):

Verb

smēaġan

consider, think about 

meditate

examine, scrutinize, question 

These definitions line up with the definition assigned to mamorian. I hope you can follow how my brain made this leap, but this made me feel confident enough to say the jstor article is saying both mamra and smoen mean sleep or at least something similar to it. 

So we have our translation of SMCEN:

SLEEP

The rest is far less confusing. I think.

Now that I knew I should use Smoen as a search term and that it was a medieval word, google helped me a lot more.

I found this book about the Magical Treatise of Solomon:

You can search the book for the word “smoen” and that’s how I found a lot more I could use to find answers.

I found some alternate versions of smoen that helped with searching: Skonin and Skoen

I found that Smoen was a demon linked to the angel Patiel (or Pathiel)

This book also has a whole page of runes, some of which are similar to the Sundowning runes. It’s page 323 of the book if you want to see.

This book has a lot to it, but for the purposes of this rune translation attempt, I moved on.

The book mentioned lots of Greek words and names so I applied that to my search for the meanings of the other runes.

In Greek and Latin the letter j did not exist. “I” was used in place of “J.” So I switched the j in the remaining runes to an i. (AJR -> AIR)

I searched for info on ESIO maybe being a medieval latin word and I found this source: 

(which is from the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from Celtic Sources)

It said this: 

estio --> esio

esto (adv.)

esto (adv.)

so i searched for Esto and found this: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/esto 

And that said…

Etymology 1

Form of the verb edō (“I eat”).

Pronunciation

(Classical) IPA: /ˈeːs.toː/, [ˈeːs̠t̪oː]

(modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA: /ˈes.to/, [ˈɛst̪o]

Verb

ēstō

second/third-person singular future active imperative of edō

So I think ESIO could mean EAT.

At this point my brain was leaking out of my ears so I gave up thinking. I decided AIR just meant AIR.

Air = Breathe???

And that’s the story of how the discord chat decided it said...

EAT BREATHE SLEEP

The end?

Eden's Rest friends involved in the making of this monster: @ccsven and @r-e-dax-t-e-d

Here’s @ccsven's drawing where we started trying to figure out wtf that said. And oh man, did we. Did we? I still don’t know.

[purplesigebert]

@jstor definitely knows which one you should send to the original groupie in your life 😘

Happy Valentine’s Day, Gabby! 💖💖💖

Aww this is so true!!!

I'm so glad I've been reading your work for so long!

Thank you for reaching out to me and being my friend!

Happy Valentine's Day, Bella! 💜💜💜

[qqueenofhades]

I'm gonna LOSE my academic access as of January and I was wondering, do you have any tips?

OH NO, TERRIBLE. I hung onto my PhD-university credentials as long as I could, since I had a faculty email as well as a student email, but eventually yes, alas, they took them away and then I had to suffer. So the occasion of once more being able to log in to full-text databases and free PDF journal articles today was one of great rejoicing. Obviously the best option for keeping academic credentials after student access expires is "get another academic/university job and get new ones," but as believe me, I know how hard that is, here are my best tips for surviving as a Scholar in Exile:

Make use of the free tools like Google Scholar, JSTOR, etc. I think JSTOR is still letting you read 100 free articles a year, which they started during the pandemic to support scholars working remotely/virtually. Project MUSE also occasionally has free full-text articles. Google Scholar doesn't necessarily give you the full article, but it is good for finding basic cites and making bibliography lists. Google Books also has a surprisingly decent amount of scholarly monographs with some texts/chapters available to read for free.

Likewise: Academia.edu can be somewhat hit or miss (and I'm sure you know that they will send you eighty billion emails every time someone so much as breathes in the direction of your profile) but there is some genuinely good stuff that can also be accessed there for free, and it's always worth looking.

Maintain your academic connections! I have occasionally hit up university friends to ask if they could get something for me, and I'm willing to do the same for you (and any of my other followers in a similar position). Especially since I know that we work on similar (medieval) stuff, if there's something you really need to have, DM me and I will send you a copy by email.

Likewise, you can also try the method of directly emailing a scholar and asking for a copy of their paper, if you can't find it for free. This has worked for me before, and as you know, academics are vain creatures who are almost always THRILLED to hear that someone actually wants to voluntarily read their stuff.

Join alumni/networking groups for your university, degree program, field of study, etc, on Facebook, LinkedIn, or wherever. People often keep in touch and post requests for documents or books, so it's always worth shooting a request out into the ether, as someone will usually be willing to help.

Anyway: obviously this can't replace everything, and it really sucks not to have access to whatever you want, but it is possible to keep working at a high level; I've had something like three or four publications accepted after I left my PhD university, and was mostly able to write and research them with the more limited tools I had available. So yes, with a little creativity, you can definitely do it.

[solradguy]

I'm kinda scared of saying I kin anything because I'm not sure how that works. if it's not too much trouble, could you explain it to me, please?

Ah man... It's complicated and the identity itself is massively decentralized so I'll do my best to kind of explain what I've been able to dig up and what it means to me. Most of this information was gathered from essays written by therians or animal/mythological beasts kin. There is not much information about or written by fictionkin, which is... a complex source of frustration for me.

So, at its core, otherkin is a spiritual identity. Nearly every essay I've read on it has very clearly stated in the opening paragraph that the author is fully aware that they are not physically the thing they are kin with. But there's this deep connection to the thing they kin ("resonance") that goes beyond it just being a way to say that character/animal/concept/etc is their absolute favorite. One essay I read ("We are spirits of another sort") that did touch on fictionkin a little described it as being an archetypal or metaphorical identity alongside being a spiritual one.

For example, with my relation to Sol, obviously I'm not actually physically him, he isn't real, and I wouldn't want to ever go through the things he's been through. But still it's uncanny how relatable he is and it's easy to sort of filter or explore myself through him, I guess. This is something I didn't realize I did with characters throughout my whole life until recently with Sol. It started as a bunch of jokes my friends made at my expense (lovingly, I promise) which made me look into otherkin stuff more and, yeah, that's apparently what this is.

To some people this identity can feel extremely real though. A sense that maybe in a past life they were the animal they have a connection to now as a human is a common one. Recurring themes in dreams too. Some others even get phantom limb sensations to varying degrees for limbs humans don't generally have (wings, tails, absent horns or antlers, etc). Not everyone gets these and those that do don't always experience them the same way. I get some of these but I'm not going to elaborate on them on this blog. This part of the identity specifically makes me wish there was a real scientific study done on it since there's definitely something neurological going on here.

I suppose if you see a lot of yourself in a character/animal/whatever then you might also be a type of otherkin too. I highly recommend looking for information on this identity outside of Tumblr though. Its meaning has been distorted a bit on here and there's a lot of weird drama around it with very little actual conversation. Making a private sideblog or journal to try to sort out your feelings and thoughts towards what you think you might be kin of has helped me a lot too.

There are essays on otherkin.net that I found useful in my initial dive into this in their featured articles tab:

For something slightly less anecdotal, "We are spirits of another sort" by Joseph P. Laycock was also informative. It's on JSTOR and you'll have to sign in to an institution to read/download it but I can upload a PDF of it somewhere tomorrow if you don't have a method of reading it for free.

A couple otherkin/therians have Neocities sites with essays on their experiences too. Doing a search for "otherkin" should bring them up. I'm replying to this on mobile or I'd link some, sorry...

Even if you read a lot about it or try applying the identity label to yourself for a bit and it doesn't work out, just remember that that's alright. It's good to test out and explore things and with something "open source" like otherkinity, there truly is no "wrong" way to identify with it. Just do what feels right or most comfortable to you.

Some briefer definitions:

Otherkin: This is a blanket term for all these kinds of identities but most often means someone kin with an animal, mythological beast (dragons, unicorns, demons, etc), or concept (weather patterns, inanimate objects). Conceptkin seem especially fringe.

Fictionkin: Otherkin with a fictional character or species. Formerly called "mediakin".

Therian: An exclusively animal-based identity. Almost shamanistic? The reincarnation aspect seems strongest with therians, with a feeling of an animal soul displaced in a human body.

[alex51324]

OP, if it helps, I know a bunch of people who are independent scholars--they work a day job but still engage with their academic interests. (It helps if you can find a day job that pays enough, but doesn't necessarily use all of your mental energy--easier said than done, especially these days, but there's nothing wrong with putting in your hours, then leaving the job at the jobsite and getting on with what you actually want to do.)

The JStor free account is a great resource for being able to read in your field of interest, and many academic libraries have a "community member" option that allows you to check out books for a small annual fee. A local public library can also often get things for you through Interlibrary Loan.

It's totally a thing people do; as JStor suggests, if you start looking for online communities and forums for your area of interest, you'll find awesome people you can talk with about the things you care about, and role models for the kind of life you'd like to have.

Depending on what your field is, there may also be opportunities for in-person engagement: many communities, even very small ones, have a local historical society, for instance (and delving into the history of an "insignificant" place can be very interesting); or a lot of conservation groups do science-adjacent projects (think "friends" of a nearby body of water, and so forth); or museums/zoos/historic sites/etc. may have volunteer programs where, after you've demonstrated reliability with the standard volunteer tasks, there can be opportunities for substantial work. My friend who is an independent Jane Austen scholar has done some work with community theater groups, adapting Jane for the stage.

Different fields of study and different local areas will have more or fewer opportunities, and it definitely helps if you can bloom where you're planted--look for something that's available to you and that you can become interested in--but being out of formal education absolutely does not have to cut you off from intellectual pursuits. Good luck!

hi jstor, quick question, what do i do with all the regret that's slowly choking me? i'm an academic at heart in a world where i'm no longer in academia, and i'm not thriving one bit 🫠 had to turn down a place in a phd program 2 yrs ago & now it's my biggest regret in life. you've given people such compassionate advice, so maybe you can help? research/writing is my passion & i miss having the space to indulge it & keep learning!

Hi there, thanks for reaching out with such a heartfelt question. It takes a lot to express this sort of sentiment publicly and we appreciate that you trust us enough to ask.

The regret you're feeling is natural, considering so much of your identity and passion lies in your research and writing. Your friendly JSTOR mod has also been struggling with feeling unmoored outside of academia, and I've been wondering myself if I should work my way back somehow or create a structure of my own.

The good news is that you can actually create a structure of your own! Many scholars contribute to their fields independently, so it may be worth considering a personal research project that you can work on at your own pace (which has its advantages). Public libraries often provide access to academic databases like JSTOR, and your alma mater might have resources available to alumni. Communities and forums online are a good way to reach others who are feeling similar and doing similar things.

Your writing also doesn't have to stop! If it's not your only focus it may go quite a bit slower, but many journals accept submissions from independent researchers. In addition, platforms like Medium and Substack may allow you to self-publish some of your work. You could even look into pitching guest posts for relevant publications!

It doesn't have to be a permanent goodbye to academia either. Does your alma mater welcome guest lecturers, or are there any community workshops in your area? These are some ways you could share your passions with others. Plus, academia will always be there–if an opportunity arises for you to return and it aligns with your circumstances, you can.

This is by no means exhaustive, so I do hope that anyone from the community who would like to share insights does so in the replies. Wishing you the best of luck, wherever you may go from here!

[cappymightwrite]

What draws you to incest ?

*sighs* Ok, here we go. I'm a real card carrying Jonsa now aren't I?

Anon, listen. I know this is an anti question that gets bandied about a lot, aimed at provoking, etc, when we all know no Jonsa is out here being all you know what, it really is the incest, and the incest alone, that draws me in. I mean, come on now. Grow up.

If I was "drawn" to incest I'd be a fan of Cersei x Jaime, Lucrezia x Cesare, hell Oedipus x Jocasta etc... but I haven't displayed any interest in them now, have I? So, huh, it can't be that.

Frankly, it's a derivitive question that is really missing the mark. I'm not "drawn" to it, though yeah, it is an unavoidable element of Jonsa. The real question you should be asking though, is what draws GRRM to it? Because he obviously is drawn to it, specifically what is termed the "incest motif" in academic and literary scholarship. That is a far more worthwhile avenue of thinking and questioning, compared with asking me. Luckily for you though anon, I sort of anticipated getting this kind of question so had something in my drafts on standby...

You really don't have to look far, or that deeply, to be hit over the head by the connection between GRRM's literary influences and the incest motif. I mean, let's start with the big cheese himself, Tolkein:

Tolkein + Quenta Silmarillion

We know for definite that GRRM has been influenced by Tolkein, and in The Silmarillion you notably have a case of unintentional incest in Quenta Silmarillion, where Túrin Turambar, under the power of a curse, unwittingly murders his friend, as well as marries and impregnates his sister, Nienor Níniel, who herself had lost her memory due to an enchantment.

Mr Tolkein, "what draws you to incest?"

Old Norse + Völsunga saga

Tolkein, as a professor of Anglo-Saxon, was hugely influenced by Old English and Old Norse literature. The story of the ring Andvaranaut, told in Völsunga saga, is strongly thought to have been a key influence behind The Lord of the Rings. Also featured within this legendary saga is the relationship between the twins Signy and Sigmund — at one point in the saga, Signy tricks her brother into sleeping with her, which produces a son, Sinfjotli, of pure Völsung blood, raised with the singular purpose of enacting vengence.

Anonymous Norse saga writer, "what draws you to incest?"

Medieval Literature as a whole

A lot is made of how "true" to the storied past ASOIAF is, how reflective it is of medieval society (and earlier), its power structures, its ideals and martial values etc. ASOIAF, however, is not attempting historical accuracy, and should not be read as such. Yet it is clearly drawing from a version of the past, as depicted in medieval romances and pre-Christian mythology for instance, as well as dusty tomes on warfare strategy. As noted by Elizabeth Archibald in her article Incest in Medieval Literature and Society (1989):

Of course the Middle Ages inherited and retold a number of incest stories from the classical world. Through Statius they knew Oedipus, through Ovid they knew the stories of Canace, Byblis, Myrrha and Phaedra. All these stories end more or less tragically: the main characters either die or suffer metamorphosis. Medieval readers also knew the classical tradition of incest as a polemical accusation,* for instance the charges against Caligula and Nero. – p. 2

The word "polemic" is connected to controversy, to debate and dispute, therefore these classical texts were exploring the incest motif in order to create discussion on a controversial topic. In a way, your question of "what draws you to incest?" has a whiff of polemical accusation to it, but as I stated, you're missing the bigger question.

Moving back to the Middle Ages, however, it is interesting that we do see a trend of more incest stories appearing within new narratives between the 11th and 13th centuries, according to Archibald:

The texts I am thinking of include the legend of Judas, which makes him commit patricide and then incest before betraying Christ; the legend of Gregorius, product of sibling incest who marries his own mother, but after years of rigorous penance finally becomes a much respected pope; the legend of St Albanus, product of father-daughter incest, who marries his mother, does penance with both his parents but kills them when they relapse into sin, and after further penance dies a holy man; the exemplary stories about women who sleep with their sons, and bear children (whom they sometimes kill), but refuse to confess until the Virgin intervenes to save them; the legends of the incestuous begetting of Roland by Charlemagne and of Mordred by Arthur; and finally the Incestuous Father romances about calumniated wives, which resemble Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale except that the heroine's adventures begin when she runs away from home to escape her father's unwelcome advances. – p. 2

I mean... that last bit sounds eerily quite close to what we have going on with Petyr Baelish and Sansa Stark. But I digress. What I'm trying to say is that from a medieval and classical standpoint... GRRM is not unique in his exploration of the incest motif, far from it.

Sophocles, Ovid, Hartmann von Aue, Thomas Malory, etc., "what draws you to incest?"

Faulkner + The Sound and the Fury, and more!

Moving on to more modern influences though, when talking about the writing ethos at the heart of his work, GRRM has famously quoted William Faulker:

His mantra has always been William Faulkner’s comment in his Nobel prize acceptance speech, that only the “human heart in conflict with itself… is worth writing about”. [source]

I’ve never read any Faulker, so I did just a quick search on “Faulkner and incest” and I pulled up this article on JSTOR, called Faulkner and the Politics of Incest (1998). Apparently, Faulkner explores the incest motif in at least five novels, therefore it was enough of a distinctive theme in his work to warrant academic analysis. In this journal article, Karl F. Zender notes that:

[...] incest for Faulkner always remains tragic [...] – p. 746

Ah, we can see a bit of running theme here, can't we? But obviously, GRRM (one would hope) doesn’t just appreciate Faulkner’s writing for his extensive exploration of incest. This quote possibly sums up the potential artistic crossover between the two:

Beyond each level of achieved empathy in Faulkner's fiction stands a further level of exclusion and marginalization. – pp. 759–60

To me, the above parallels somewhat GRRM’s own interest in outcasts, in personal struggle (which incest also fits into):

I am attracted to bastards, cripples and broken things as is reflected in the book. Outcasts, second-class citizens for whatever reason. There’s more drama in characters like that, more to struggle with. [source]

Interestingly, however, this essay on Faulkner also connects his interest in the incest motif with the romantic poets, such as Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron:

As Peter Thorslev says in an important study of romantic representations of incest, " [p]arent-child incest is universally condemned in Romantic literature...; sibling incest, on the other hand, is invariably made sympathetic, is sometimes exonerated, and, in Byron's and Shelley's works, is definitely idealized.” – p. 741

Faulkner, "what draws you to incest?" ... I mean, that article gives some good explanations, actually.

Lord Byron, Manfred + The Bride of Abydos

Which brings us onto GRRM interest in the Romantics:

I was always intensely Romantic, even when I was too young to understand what that meant. But Romanticism has its dark side, as any Romantic soon discovers... which is where the melancholy comes in, I suppose. I don't know if this is a matter of artistic influences so much as it is of temperament. But there's always been something in a twilight that moves me, and a sunset speaks to me in a way that no sunrise ever has. [source]

I'm already in the process of writing a long meta about the influence of Lord Byron in ASOIAF, specifically examining this quote by GRRM:

The character I’m probably most like in real life is Samwell Tarly. Good old Sam. And the character I’d want to be? Well who wouldn’t want to be Jon Snow — the brooding, Byronic, romantic hero whom all the girls love. Theon [Greyjoy] is the one I’d fear becoming. Theon wants to be Jon Snow, but he can’t do it. He keeps making the wrong decisions. He keeps giving into his own selfish, worst impulses. [source]

Lord Byron, "what draws you to—", oh, um, right. Nevermind.

I'm not going to repeat myself here, but it's worth noting that there is a clear through line between GRRM and the Romantic writers, besides perhaps melancholic "temperament"... and it's incest.

But look, is choosing to explore the incest motif...well, a choice? Yeah, and an uncomfortable one at that, but it’s obvious that that is what GRRM is doing. I think it’s frankly a bit naive of some people to argue that GRRM would never do Jonsa because it’s pseudo-incest and therefore morally repugnant, no ifs, no buts. I’m sorry, as icky as it may be to our modern eyes, GRRM has set the president for it in his writing with the Targaryens and the Lannister twins.

The difference with them is that they knowingly commit incest, basing it in their own sense of exceptionalism, and there are/will be bad consequences — this arguably parallels the medieval narratives in which incest always ends badly, unless some kind of real penance is involved. For Jon and Sansa, however, the Jonsa argument is that they will choose not to commit incest, despite a confused attraction, and then will be rewarded in the narrative through the parentage reveal, a la Byron’s The Bride of Abydos. The Targaryens and Lannisters, in several ways excluding the incest (geez the amount of times I’ve written incest in this post), are foils for the Starks, and in particular, Jon and Sansa. Exploring the incest motif has been on the cards since the very beginning — just look at that infamous "original" outline — regardless of whether we personally consider that an interesting writing choice, or a morally inexcusable one.

Word of advice, or rather, warning... don't think you can catch me out with these kinds of questions. I have access to a university database, so if I feel like procrastinating my real academic work, I can and will pull out highly researched articles to school you, lmao.

But you know, thanks for the ask anyway, I guess.

[studythenight-away]

Hello! As finals season (aka 5-research-papers-due-in-a-week season) dawns on many of you, I thought I would share the process I used to write papers in college. This made writing long research papers much less daunting (but can also work on shorter papers). I really hope this helps some of you who feel stuck. Especially during these ridiculous times, when you're stuck at home and might have other uncontrollable factors affecting your mental health, a clear framework of what to do could be helpful. Good luck, my friends! You got this.

About me

I graduated college in 2018 with degrees in Political Science + International Studies and will be starting law school this fall. I wrote nearly 20 15 to 25-page papers, never earning below an A. I loved researching about my topics but hated writing. It's tedious, takes so much time, and everything I write sounds bad at first. Plus, I was a terrible procrastinator so most of these essays were written in under a week. Talk about stress.

Over time I found a process that worked for me, one that made churning out a paper seem straightforward, like going through a factory line rather than this terrifying concept of writing 10,000 words. It kept me sane without decreasing the quality of my work (or more importantly, how much I learned!) 

I'm thinking about making a short video to show this in action… let me know if that could be helpful!

Step 1: Research

How you organize your research is a key step in keeping you sane. Usually I'll have a pile of 20 books in my dorm along with dozens of JSTOR tabs open on my laptop, and that can get overwhelming very fast. Right now just focus on collecting ideas, not developing an argument or even an outline! As with most research papers, you could be starting with little to no background information on the topic, so it is still too early to be thinking about an argument.

Put all your research in one document

Open up a new doc: this will be the heart of everything. For a 15-page paper I usually end up with around 14-18 pages of typed research, 10 pt font, single spaced, tiny margins. This seems like a lot, but essentially all I do is type up anything I read that seems relevant to my topic, so luckily this step does not require that much brain power. Just type type type!

Use the table of contents

Find the chapter(s) that are actually relevant instead of skimming through the whole book. Time is of the essence here!

Use Zotero, cite right away

You can also use easybib or whatever you're used to, but keep track of your sources. I like Zotero because I can keep a log of all of my sources and copy the footnote or bibliography version whenever needed. Before you even begin reading, cite the source and copy it into your research doc. This will save you so much time later when you have to put in your citations in the actual paper. 

Here is an example of what my research doc looks like:

Full citation is my heading for each source just so it’s crystal clear

I ignore all typos (I don’t think there are any in this part though, go me!) because my head is buried in the book just trying to get all the info down

I always start with the page number so I know what to cite when I go back

Create a shorthand 

While typing up research, you might think of something that the author didn't talk about that you'll want to write in your paper. Or perhaps a few sentences already start to form. Put them all in one place, with your research, so you know what source you'll have to cite to then lead into your idea. I type "!@#" before anything that is strictly my own idea so I'm never confused. It's fast and stands out.

This is an example: the two bullet points above are evidence from my source, which made me think of this argument I could make, which I noted with “!@#”

Step 2: Read Your Research

Now that you have all your information, go back and read through it all. Every time you read about a new theme/person/event, write it down somewhere. You may come up with a list of 20+ different ideas in your research. No matter how small, as long as there is something about it, write it down. Each of these mini themes is going to end up being a paragraph in your paper or combined with another mini theme. 

Once you’ve made your list, look for larger overarching themes. In the paper I’ve shown you, I had mini categories like “political party x” “religion” “labor groups” “little organization” and “hierarchy.” When I looked back I though, hey these are all groups and how groups are working together, so they each became their own mini paragraph under the subsection of “Alliances.”

As with most research paper structures, I try to find three general themes/subsections (like an extended version of that 5-paragraph essay we wrote in middle school). It makes the paper less messy and also makes sure I’m not covering things that are beyond a reasonable scope.

During this step, you are also searching for your thesis. It won’t be your final version. As you fill in your outline in the next step you may make slight changes. But this is definitely when you start thinking about it.

Step 3: Outline

We’re ready to outline! Once I’ve collected all my different themes and organized all my subsections and paragraphs, it’s time to fill in that outline. I start a new doc just for the outline and take advantage of google doc’s headings function to make a clear document outline.

Here comes the fun part, I read through my research one more time, this time copy and pasting all my research into each section of the outline. The document outline in google docs makes this easy because I can just click on each subheading to get me there (super helpful when you’re dealing with 15+ pages of research).

Here is what it looks like:

Let’s say I need to add something to my outline about labor groups. Boom, labor groups. Also, the typos are really abound here haha

Step 4: Write the Paper

Okay, I get it, easier said than done. BUT! You already have everything set up. Your outline is essentially just a list of your paragraphs and all you have to do is paraphrase, cite, and create a topic sentence. And that’s how you should think about this: you’re essentially transforming bullet points into sentences and adding footnotes. 

In high school my English teacher introduced us to Sh*tty First Drafts for creative writing, but honestly the same applies to research papers. Sometimes I’ll even have phrases like “wait no that’s not what I meant but basically...” and when I go back to edit, I realize that what came after “but basically...” is fine! And I keep it. So just start typing.

How do you cite while you write? Because we’re trying to get a constant stream of writing going, inserting proper footnotes after each sentence you type is too bothersome. I usually split screen with my outline and my paper so I just copy and paste a few words from my bullet point into my footnote, like so:

(This is from a different paper about cluster munitions.)

Step 5: Edit the Paper

I work best when I print out my first draft and make all edits in red pen. I feel more productive and can visually see where I want to move sentences and what I need to change. The more red there is the better I can feel the paper getting. (Whether or not that’s true doesn’t matter. We’re trying to stay motivated here!) When it’s all digital I don’t really see the progress. Plus, once I finish all the red, I get another moment of passive brain work, where all I’m doing is transferring edits rather than thinking. And at this point in the process, that kind of relief is much welcomed. 

The good thing about this process is there’s not usually a need to cut entire paragraphs or pages because the paper you end up with is just a formalized version of your outline. Because you started with such a detailed outline, the cutting and editing now is just to refine your word choices and get rid of the “but basically”s. You’re almost there!

Step 6: Replace your citations

Now it’s time to go back and replace your footnotes with actual citations. Zotero makes this easy because in Word you can just insert and add the page number, and it’ll automatically do “Ibid.” for you when needed. Ctrl+f in the original research doc to quickly find the source.

Step 7: One More Read-Through and Submit!

Congratulations!! You’ve got a fully-researched and well-backed paper! Of course, even though the process is straightforward, it’s still a lot of work. In ideal situations I would start researching two weeks before the deadline, but if need be, I believe I’ve done this all in three miserable panic-filled days as well. 

Please message me if you have any questions at all! I really hope some of you find this helpful! Good luck!

[laurelnose]

monster! parasites!

you know how a few days ago i said we weren’t going to talk about monster parasites? that was a fucking lie.

the basis of my monster parasite thoughts are: every organism comes with its own internal ecosystem that goes with them everywhere. it’s like having built-in friends! ergo, when monsters crossed over to the witcher dimension during the Conjunction of Spheres they must have brought many new and delightful parasites with them. you know what fiend manes are full of? MITES. you know what drowners got on their skin? COPEPODS. what can we do with this information? anything we want.

i promise there are no pictures below the cut. i have tried to put warnings on all my sources but click any of the links below at your own risk. warning for internal and external parasites of animals, monsters, humans, and witchers; parasites altering the behavior of their hosts; and probably general body horror. if you read the eating-liver-flukes post that’s probably a decent baseline for how revolting you will find this post. 

also, super obvious bias towards aquatic parasites as referents. my degree is fisheries science not terrestrial ecology so that’s primarily what i’m drawing on even though nearly all of the witcher monsters are terrestrial. there is a TON i’m missing here bc of that bias! specifically i really wish i could talk about how parasites of invasive species often act as co-invaders with their hosts and monsters definitely count as invasive species and would have majorly reshaped ecological interactions on the Continent but i don’t know enough about terrestrial ecosystems to speculate properly. (ETA: while i still think monsters would have majorly reshaped ecological interactions on the Continent, I don’t actually think they’re invasive species anymore!) hopefully you enjoy it anyways!

it is, hilariously, canon that parasites are used for alchemy. according to The Last Wish, the Temple of Melitele’s grotto grows a bunch of different “rare specimens—those which made up the ingredients of a witcher’s medicines and elixirs, magical philters and a sorcerer’s decoctions” and some of those specimens are, uh, “clusters of nematodes.” nematodes being parasitic roundworms. this is really funny because it’s so fucking weird. also everything else in this description is a plant or a fungus and nematodes are definitely animals? i choose to believe the world makes sense and nematodes aren’t plants in the witcherverse. therefore parasites are alchemical ingredients, it’s canon, give me more witchers digging through monster intestines in search of worms and put a nematode colony in the basement of corvo bianco please and thank you

this actually leads right into my personal favorite drowner headcanon (hello yes i’m tumblr user Socks Laurelnose and i am always thinking about drowners)—you know those bits where drowners kind of have red blotches in their skin? those are nematodes, actually, because i said so. the reference is Clavinema mariae, a nematode that infests English sole. the worms are basically harmless but they’re dark red and you can see them through the skin. it freaks people out and makes it hard to sell sole. (IMAGE WARNING: a picture of an infected flatfish. it looks mostly normal but there’s a dark red lesion near the fin.) said lesion is probably a coiled-up Clavinema. sole have so many of these, it’s not even funny (PDF article link, IMAGE WARNING for worms visible underneath skin of flatfishes. relevant images pointing out exactly how many worms on page 5). “but the red parts of drowners could just be flushed from blood”—no. worms. 

okay that was my main specific-parasite-for-specific-monster headcanon (except also succubi probably have a unique species of lice for their hairy legs. but that’s barely even a headcanon, basically all terrestrial vertebrates have a unique species of lice.) i wanted to start with it because i think that everyone should feel free to arbitrarily assign a totally benign but conceptually gross worm to their favorite monsters. why not, yanno? also it probably sets the tone for the rest of this post. 

carrying on: “what monsters might have nematodes, besides drowners,” you may be wondering? probably all of them! all of them are full of nematodes. nematodes are fucking everywhere. allow me to share a deeply unsettling quote from nematologist Nathan Cobb: 

“In short, if all the matter in the universe except the nematodes were swept away, our world would still be dimly recognizable, and if, as disembodied spirits, we could then investigate it, we should find its mountains, hills, vales, rivers, lakes, and oceans represented by a film of nematodes. The location of towns would be decipherable since, for every massing of human beings, there would be a corresponding massing of certain nematodes. Trees would still stand in ghostly rows representing our streets and highways. The location of the various plants and animals would still be decipherable, and, had we sufficient knowledge, in many cases even their species could be determined by an examination of their erstwhile nematode parasites.”

jesus christ! thanks nathan, I hate it. nematodes are usually both benign and microscopic, but we’re talking witchers, we want some parasites we can fuckin get our hands on. sperm whale placentas are sometimes infested with nematodes up to 28 feet long but only a centimeter in diameter (Wikipedia link, no images). like an incredibly awful spaghetti! we don’t really seem to know if this bothers the sperm whales. also, i unfortunately do not know enough about the size of whale organs to tell you how big the placenta is in relation to this worm. the point is: real big monster? REAL BIG NEMATODES.

moving on from nematodes—okay, you know, since i mentioned eating deer liver flukes at the start of this post, let’s just go there. real life flukes max out at about 3 inches long, but hypothetical monster flukes could be much bigger and equally edible if desired. (if you’re wondering what a liver fluke would taste like: the flukes feed on the liver and they have very few organs of their own, so they would taste basically just like liver, just also long and flat like a fruit roll-up. if you’re going there, a witcher should not eat any flatworm live. if they’re digging them out of cockatrice livers or whatnot they should kill them before munching or save to cook later. it would probably be safe to eat one live, but you know that cliche “their tongues battled for dominance”? handling a live flatworm is like a handling very strong and energetic tongue complete with slime, okay, it wouldn’t be nice.)

parasites often need more than one host to complete the life cycle—for instance, Leucochloridium paradoxum (VIDEO WARNING: you may have seen this, it’s the one that makes snail eyes pulsating & green) has a bird stage and a snail stage, and it makes the snails look and act really weird in order to attract the birds. parasites altering host behavior to attract the next host in the life cycle is pretty well-documented; for instance, there’s an eye fluke that can make fish swim near the surface where predators can eat them (New Scientist article link, images of a microscope slide & a normal-looking fish) and a tapeworm that does the same and makes the dark silver fish turn white (JSTOR article, no images). i posit that at least some monsters are accompanied by “ill omens” of animals looking or acting strangely because they become infected with a stage of one of the monster’s parasites—usually, the mechanism is that internal parasites lay eggs that are passed in feces & transmitted that way. witchers who are up on their parasite ecology might be able to identify what monster is hanging around by observing exactly what kind of freaky-looking animals or animal behavior is going on around the area!

(if geralt is involved you may desire to have him explain this totally non-supernatural mechanism for abrupt animal appearance or behavioral changes at excruciating length to the chagrin of all present. or maybe that’s just what i desire. it would be funny okay)

potentially even more hyperspecific application of dual-stage parasites: there’s a dinoflagellate parasite that, when it infects crabs, makes the meat chalky and bitter like aspirin (Smithsonian link, images of healthy crab and microscope slide). geralt hunts down dinner, digs in, and immediately sighs and grabs jaskier’s portion away from him to the poet’s complete bafflement before going to get his swords because judging by the flavor there’s definitely a shishiga nest in this forest. 

like. parasites are one of THE most hyperspecific things in biology. the majority of them have very specific hosts and life cycles, many of them are completely unique to a species, if you think a fictional parasite is too specific to be plausible you’re probably wrong, make it even more specific. “the witcher monster lore is so hyperspecific lol” IT AIN’T TRULY HYPERSPECIFIC UNTIL YOU CAN IDENTIFY EACH MONSTER SPECIES BY ITS UNIQUE PARASITIC LOAD, OKAY.

and, with regards to behavior-affecting parasites, before anyone brings up Cordyceps (Ophiocordyceps, as of 2008): yeah that sure is a thing! if you weren’t aware, just a couple of years ago we found out it actually is not a mind control fungus!! it bypasses the brain entirely and affects the muscles (Arstechnica article, Atlantic article—photos of fuzzy ants and electron microscope pictures of fungi). or as Ed Yong puts it, “The ant ends its life as a prisoner in its own body. Its brain is still in the driver's seat, but the fungus has the wheel.” which is. significantly worse than the brain thing. awesome!! i bet there would absolutely be similar fungal parasites of endrega and arachasae. real Ophiocordyceps still very much does not affect humans, but you know what, if plants can be cursed into becoming archespores and cultivated by mages i see no reason why mages could not also curse endrega fungus to affect humans, just saying

aaaand quickly back to hyperspecificity: monsters in different geographical areas having different abilities because of their symbionts. forktails in vicovaro acquire a bioluminescent symbiont in their diet that forktails in other parts of the continent can’t get, and they can create flashes of light? that’s sure gonna fuck a witcher on Cat up when he comes in the cave expecting a normal forktail. (geographic location affecting bioluminescence is a thing that actually happens in midshipman fish—Wikipedia link, no parasites.) geographically-dependent symbionts can also produce different toxins and such for their hosts! this isn’t exactly a parasitism thing per se (although parasites are also symbionts because ‘symbiosis’ refers to two organisms in close association not two organisms in positive association) but like. it’s cool okay ecology is so cool

writing fic and tired of all these same-old monsters-of-the-week? quick and easy way to spice up either the horror factor or just make the hunt stand out slightly: just add parasites!! i know i’ve read fics where monsters were described with distinguishing old wounds. you can do the same with parasites! i would fucking swoon over a detail like an ancient water hag’s eyes glowing in the dark, one of them marred by a dangling parasite—geralt notes the blind spot and presses his advantage. (Wikipedia link, no images: this one is referencing an aquatic copepod called Ommatokoita.) also, please put barnacles on skelliger drowners, i want it so badly. just—some percentage of monsters should be Extra Grody on the inside and/or the outside, that’s how nature works. spicing up a mundane hunt by making the monster a little extra gross for its species is Valid, is what I’m saying.

also, every single time frozen specimens with obvious fungal/ectoparasite infections come into the lab we absolutely always take extra close-up pictures of those suckers and make sure everyone else gets to see them. witchers bringing field sketches and notes of the weirdest shit they found on the path back for winter. lambert declares they’ll never know if this alleged fiend tumor was a fungus or mange because geralt sucks at drawing. eskel, the man who hauled a katakan corpse all the way up the mountain so he could dissect it, produces actual skin samples of his own encounters for examination, possibly in the middle of dinner. this elicits mixed reactions.

quick detour into preservation, since I went there—witchers are probably immune to parasites that infect humans by virtue of having pretty different biology to begin with, and probably immune to parasitic infections from other sources by virtue of superhumanly boosted immune systems and all the poison they put into their bodies on a regular basis. picking up a monster parasite would probably not be a big deal for witchers, either in that they have total immunity or that they would only be minimally and briefly affected, but the field of monster biology is likely such that they probably just don’t actually know what would happen to them in the majority of cases. this has potential as a source of battle stories and/or stories intended to freak out trainees, i think. therefore, out of caution, a witcher harvesting/preparing parts for alchemy might want to be sure to treat them first. personally i think all monster parts should be preserved immediately anyways to avoid attracting necrophages, and given that alchemical concoctions in witcherverse are alcohol-based, preservation in strong alcohol is probably the best way to maintain potency and kill basically everything. (cons: alcohol is SUPER heavy and jars are fragile. tissues or organs which are thicker than perhaps half an inch or an inch require additional preparation for the alcohol to penetrate properly. other preservation methods are more efficient for travel. depends on how soon your witcher intends to use or offload their stash.)

also, here’s an absolutely wild marine parasite that would make it worth a witcher’s while to make certain everything was dead! pearlfishes are long eel-like fishes that live inside the anus and respiratory organs (which are attached to the anus) of sea cucumbers, and they have pretty nasty teeth (PDF article link, IMAGE WARNING: dissected sea cucumbers literally stuffed to the gills with pearlfish). the highest number of pearlfish discovered in a single sea cucumber was sixteen (ResearchGate article, free PDF; no images). a different fact: we discovered tiger sharks eat each other in the womb because a researcher got bitten by a fetal tiger shark while he was dissecting the mother (NYT link, no images or parasites). what i’m saying is: parasites are often very small relative to the host and usually harmless to things rummaging around inside, but what if the monster’s parasites were also monstrous. give me a monster that has to be very dead or when you start rummaging around for alchemy ingredients the things in its intestines will lunge out and bite you. 

what happens if a human becomes infected with a monster parasite? bad things, probably, i mentioned before that parasites in the wrong host, if they don’t just die, often super fuck things up internally (if you get tapeworms outside of the intestine where they’re supposed to be... it’s not good y’all. CDC link, no images). host-jumping for parasites is actually fairly rare since most of them are highly specialized for their hosts, but it does happen. humans are very not my strong suit so i’m not going to dwell on this but it is entirely possible that something like necrophage infestations or monster-contaminated water sources or just being a little too involved on a witcher’s monster hunt could produce strange parasitic diseases in humans. up to you how well-known and/or how clouded in superstition these effects might be! opportunities for hideous whump? gross body horror? messy and horrifying parasite-driven behavioral changes? terrifying and potentially prolonged uncertainty over what the issue actually is because of minimal information about parasites? the decision whether or not to dose with a witcher potion? excellent possibilities.

okay last one, just because i think it would be fun: myxosporeans and sirens. Myxos are a parasitic relative of jellyfish that produce whirling disease in baby salmon. whirling disease causes neurological and skeletal damage and has a pretty high mortality rate, but it also makes infected fish do this, well, whirling behavior and it’s honestly fascinating. (video link: a pretty normal-looking young trout spinning like a fuckin top). imagine a siren doing that in the sky. i just think myxos are neat!

tl;dr: extra grody hyperspecific biology of monsters!!!

[theonetryingtolive]

A Reply to Harmful Literary Discourse on Tumblr

I have never actively engaged in a discussion about books in the way I am about to. Full disclosure, I have more than one degree under my belt and have written papers and been published in journals and scholarly web sites. I am saying this because I want you to understand where I am coming from. 

Recently I reblogged a post in which a user complained about The Song of Achilles and the takes on Tumblr about it. Calling for people to “read another book” and saying that the writing “sucks ass” as well as not to take it as the same thing as the Illiad. And here is why I think this discourse is offensive and damaging for readers and the community of book lovers on Tumblr. 

First of all, this is a work of fiction. Saying that it shouldn’t be taken as the Illiad is repetitive as The Song of Achilles is in itself a work of fiction. But you know what? Even if people want to think of the world of TSOA as the mythical world of the Illiad, once they read or learn about myth this vision of the world will dissipate on their own. It is offensive to assume that people cannot differentiate between one work of fiction and the other. The Illiad is another work of fiction. And assuming that TSOA can somehow take away from the Illiad is the exact embodiment of a huge fear in academia that “low-brow” or “lower class” books can somehow become as important for the literary canon than what we consider as classics. Newsflash, friends! The canon is indeed fluid and ever changing and it doesn’t matter if you go back to Derrida or talk to someone about the canon today, academics all over, critics all over agree that it is near impossible to come to a single definition of canon that satisfy everyone. TSOA is as important for the literary tapestry of today as other works of fiction. 

I assume the person who made that post had a problem with the romanticized relationship between Achilles and Patroculs that is found all over on Tumblr. And to that I have to say, I sincerely hope they do not cling to the belief that romanticizing things is cringy and should be cancelled. There are whole literature genres that are all about romanticizing situations in life, relationships, and locations. Ever heard of the pastoral genre? That’s a genre that’s about romanticizing pastoral settings, values, and relationships. Apart from the issue of somehow trying to censor romanticization of a work of fiction, there is another issue. Tumblr is a website in which anyone can write and paint and express themselves however they like so long as it is not illegal or harmful to others. Why is the poster so upset about romanticized versions of Achilles and Patroclus? Perhaps it is the same fear that I mentioned earlier, that somehow this version of these characters is taking something away from the Illiad. Spoiler alert, it doesn’t. 

Creating such a negative response and telling people to read another book is unfair to the fans of the work, unfair to people who are seeking a soft, romanticized version of a gay relationship in Ancient Greece, and it is a dick move. Are we so entrenched in our beliefs on literature that we are willing to go to these lengths to make Tumble,a place that proclaims to be inclusive, non-inclusive to these people? Know what you sound like when you do that? An asshole. I’m a POC and all my life I have felt excluded because of my skin. I don’t want that same feeling of exclusion to be part of anyone’s experiences online or offline and this negative response is damaging because of this reason. 

You are entitled to your opinion, of course, but criticizing a work of fiction is different to suggesting that TSOA is awful and sucks and people who enjoy it are somehow wrong for liking it. I saw the post, and you were very careful not to say this in any way that could imply you’re actively trying to hurt people. It didn’t work. If you have a good critique that goes beyond ‘this sucks’ and ‘I hate to see people happy’ then by all means, write a cohesive post or better yet, try to get published in a peer-reviewed journal. 

Saying that a writing sucks ass is saying nothing. It means nothing. It just means that you didn’t like the writing style, but it does not invalidate a writer’s writing style. And saying this is also harmful to budding writers who were inspired by TSOA and who may come across that harmful post and say “maybe I shouldn’t write because I will suck.” Do you think I’m going too far? Think again. If you actually cared to look around you and spoke to people you might see how one comment can fundamentally alter someone’s life. Do you want to be the one who extinguishes someone’s passion for writing? 

But just in case you were wondering, I will say Madeline Miller’s writing is not considered to be bad in style. You can go on JSTOR or Project Muse and read articles about it. There is nothing wrong with it other than the fact that it is not for everyone. TSOA is a book intended primarily for young people, and it is written in a vernacular that young readers can understand and enjoy. That does not exclude older readers from enjoying it. 

I may come to regret writing this because I can imagine the backlash that will come. On the other hand, I may not regret it one bit. Why can’t we let people enjoy the things they want to enjoy and blacklist any tags that we don’t want to see? I have blacklisted all Marvel-related tags and don’t go out of my way to call out Marvel fans for liking the films or comics. It’s so easy to scroll past something you don’t want to see. Just do it.

[the-apocrypha]

8 songs, 8 tags

thanks to @toast-the-unknowing for the tag!

1. your favorite song at the moment

WE AREN'T STARTING EASY ARE WE. I'm so bad at favorite songs. Um. I finally listened to Montero by Lil Nas X about two weeks ago and it is a BOP. I'm probably the last person on earth to discover this. I've also been obsessed with the last Taylor Swift album since its release, particularly coney island because Taylor + The National = *chef's kiss*.

2. a song you associate with a favorite character or ship

Well I have a whole playlist devoted to my last fic, so that's... a lot of Stucky stuff, though largely specific to the themes of the fic. Dust to Dust by The Civil Wars is a big Steve Rogers one for me, though.

3. a song that could be about you

Mmm tough one. No Roots by Alice Merton is probably pretty close, I guess? I've definitely had phases where I was like "Yes, this song is ME", but then those phases passed and so did the songs. Right now I don't really have a personal anthem, so this one is about as close as I get.

4. a song you think is overrated

As a former marching band geek from Ohio, I have a personal vendetta against Hang on Sloopy by The McCoys, and probably only other people from Ohio will understand why. FUCK this song.

5. a good song that reminds you of a specific memory

Us by Regina Spektor - a road trip in the fall, the winding roads of eastern Pennsylvania with currents of autumn leaves skittering over the road

Aimee by Pure Prairie League - playing Bullshit by the light of a lamp in the middle of the desert, dust in every imaginable crevice, coyotes barking in the distance

Hopeless Wanderer by Mumford and Sons - a 3 am trip to Denny's in a blizzard, the zenith of the midwestern living experience

6. the last song you listened to

I'm in the middle of Hadestown (yet again), so How Long?

7. a song that makes you laugh

Most recently, the song I discovered while doing WW2 research for my last fic - Hitler Has Only Got One Ball, released in the late 1930s, which is an exquisitely graphic song about German testicles that rapidly became a popular marching song amongst Allied troops. This led to a rabbit hole on the surprisingly saucy releases of the 1930s, including Shave 'Em Dry by Lucille Bogan and My Girl's Pussy by Harry Roy. These are part of a larger music genre known as the 'dirty blues', and if you're interested in music history I can't recommend a better rabbit hole than the Great Depression experienced through the African American musician's perspective, already at the bottom of society and now forced even lower by economic downtimes. How the blues, scorned by white people and picked over by record labels in a time when they could only afford to promote a few, reliable (white) musicians, developed instead as an underground musical culture solely for and about the Black experience. The brutal honesty with which it chronicled their lives, unconcerned with the outsider's perspective. How the repeal of Prohibition ushered in the age of jazz, when white people decided they liked African American musicians again, and how the popularization of their music necessarily changed the style of it as a result, especially in a transition from rural blues to the urbanized sound of jazz as a result of major record labels forcing musicians to migrate to cities and--

Anyway. Uh. If that interests you, you should do some JSTOR searches and have a look at the history of blues.

8. a song you want your mutuals to listen to

The Sound of Silence, covered by Disturbed. This is my sixty-something year old mother's favorite song. "He has such a lovely voice," she says. "He shouldn't scream so much in his other songs."

As always, I have no real friends on this hellsite, so, I shall tag the last eight people who liked something from my feed. That's what you get for participating! @theonionpicardo, @jazzathebunny, @mklutz, @subtle-skipping, @echosera, @fiveandoh, @devildoll, @puppercut

[stumpyshocky]

Texas Superstitions - Lucky Bone/Stone & Fish Folklore

“In Texas some people carry a small bone from a fish’s head as a charm against evil. This charm is most effective after it has been lost” (Hendricks 5). 

This superstition comes from Lubbock, TX, but is echoed by another superstition from Fort Worth, TX: “Two little bones, found in the head of a certain fish, are called lucky stones; but the good luck comes only after they are lost” (Bergen 57). What is the fish bone referenced?

The luck of a fish bone, the Journal of American Folklore likes to call it the lucky bone, is not an unknown superstition throughout America. Bergen mentions superstitions from Newfoundland, Maryland, and the Western Central States, that all say that by carrying/wearing a bone from a fish you will have good luck. In these other superstitions, the type of fish is specified as either a Haddock (True Cod), Cod, Perch, or from a Gar (Osprey). The two superstitions from Texas, however, don’t give us this information. It’s just from “...a certain fish,” or from a fish head in general. I tried searching around but couldn’t find any other source stating what the type of fish is necessary in Texas. My assumption would be that any type of Demersal fish would work, such as the Catfish. Personally, Catfish are a big part of my childhood. Catfish cookouts at the lake were a common occurrence in my home town where we would fry up Catfish with our church, family, friends, anyone! 

Another fish that is a contender would be the Freshwater Drum (or gaspergou, drumfish). It is a fairly common fish in Texas and already has some magical lore associated with a bone inside its ear, called the Lucky Stone. The Lucky Stone is a part of Hoodoo magic/lore (I am not going to comment on Hoodoo or how to use/work a Lucky Stone as I am not part of this tradition). It is an otolith, or ear bone, of a fish that is usually found on shores when the heads of fish are thrown back into the water from fisherman, causing the bones to dislodge and wash ashore (Lucky Stone). A fish has two otoliths. Per Lucky Mojo, “each Drumfish ear bone has a groove or sulcus on one face that forms either an ‘L’ mark or a ‘J’ mark. The ‘L’ bones are from the fish's right side, while the ‘J’ bones come from the fish's left side....it is a common belief these days that the letter-like markings ‘L’ and ‘J’ stand for Lord Jesus, Luck and Joy, or Love and Joy” (Lucky Mojo). Lucky Mojo also mentions that the otolith of the catfish is lucky as well, so maybe that is the answer to what fish is needed for the Texas superstitions? They state “the Catfish otolith, due to the name ‘Cat’ and its relationship to sexual terms like ‘Cathouse’ and ‘[P*ssy],’ is additionally thought to bring special luck to prostitutes and women gamblers” (Lucky Stone). 

After reading about the Lucky Stone/otolith, I am fairly certain this is the two lucky stones referenced from the Fort Worth superstition. Now, what does it mean that the luck is better after they are lost? Could this be attained by intentionally losing them, such as burying them or throwing them in a river (a common theme in other folklore/superstitions). The two superstitions don’t say you have to lose them, just that the luck is better, or good, after losing them. 

There is a lot of potential in using these lucky bones/otoliths. This could be a way to seek a familiar or gain more power, like in the Toad Bone Rite. I will definitely do some experimentation, but since I don’t fish, I might have to take a trip to the store. Maybe I can convince my husband we should have some fried catfish? Now I am hungry…

Some other fish lore (all from Bergen):

-Wearing the bone from the head of a cod will cure cramps

-Wearing the fin-bone from a Haddock (caught without touching the boat) will cure cramps

-The fin-bone mentioned above is also said to cure toothaches if worn in a bag, or rheumatism if carried in your pocket. 

Fisherman followed all types of superstitions, from women not being allowed on the boat, to never saying the word “alligator” on the boat. 

Thank you for Reading!

Hope you enjoyed reading this - let me know what you thought. Got anything to add? Have you heard of a similar superstitions from your community/area? Let me know!  

Sources

Bergen, Fanny D. “The Seventh Volume of the Memoirs of the American Folk-Lore Society.” The Journal of American Folklore, vol. 12, no. 44, 1899, pp. 55-63. JSTOR, Accessed 3 Sept. 2020.

Hendricks, George D. Mirrors, Mice, and Mustaches: A Sampling of Superstitions and Popular Beliefs in Texas. Southern Methodist University Press, 1981. 

“Lucky Stone, Lucky Bone, Lucky Rock, Fish Head Stone, Drumfish Bone, Fish Ear Bone, Lucky Otolith.” Lucky Mojo. 

[jeannereames]

Could you link the articles where Sabine Müller talks about her views on Alexander and Hephaistion's relationship, and her timeline of when Hephaistion came into Alexander's life? Whilst I'm definitely in the 'lovers' camp, it's interesting to get a rounded perspective, and I haven't been able to find her writings anywhere.

A list of Sabine’s publications can be found on her academia.edu website, BUT several (especially the books) are simply a PDF of the cover and publication information. She’s not putting out her books for free. *grin* Same thing with chapters in other books, or publications that require a subscription. After all, academic publications have to pay the bills too. Quite a few of her older articles are available, however. (Scroll down.)

Most of her articles/chapters/books are listed there, so you can search for them. If you have access to a university library with a JSTOR subscription, you can try to get a PDF of it via your institution. If you don’t, you can search on Google and then pay the JSTOR fee for a copy of the article. Some book chapters may be available the same way. If you need an article for a paper but can’t find them via your uni’s JSTOR subscription, write to her and see if she can email you the PDF. She’s an extremely kind and sweet-natured person, and speaks English fluently. (But again, she can’t put copyrighted stuff out there for free.)

She’s prolific. I don’t know when she sleeps. Ha. Not all, or even most of her writing concerns Hephaistion specifically, and the bulk is in German. Sabine’s German is elegant, which (unfortunately) makes it difficult to read for non-native speakers. She does have a couple things in English on Hephaistion, including her entry on him in the new Lexicon of Argead Macedonia. She cites me in it, but she comes to some different conclusions. Probably the biggest differences between us involve whether he was Alexander’s lover, and whether they were childhood friends. Like me, Sabine thinks his career has been very underestimated, and he was far more competent than previously thought. She also agrees with me that he’s likely Athenian or of Attic-Ionian background. But she thinks he actually WAS Athenian (born there), and joined Alexander’s army as an adult. She sees the “childhood friendship” and “Achilles-Patroklos” pastiche as a Roman invention. I think the Romans exaggerated it, but I don’t think they outright invented it, and I do believe they were friends at least by their teen years. The differences are mostly a matter of how we weight the different sources.

[worms-wav]

Inhabiting The Body

I began this essay wanting to write a structured, academic piece about the body as a home. Habitat. But the more I searched, the more I realised academia is not the framework within which I can best unpack and understand my (or anyone’s) relationship to the body. I grew up being told that Western forms of knowing were the only ones that were correct. You cannot write an essay without citing sources. It is not enough to just know something, or to inherit knowledge passed down in whispers. Real knowledge is double-spaced, Times New Roman, and cold. This is not to say that I don’t think that kind of research and knowledge is valid. I think there are certainly situations where I want to understand something through the lens of academia, through other people’s research, through a bright, naked paper trail.

But trying to write this essay has taught me that that can’t be the only kind of essay I try to write when I want to understand. Which has been a difficult thing to unlearn, especially when the body has always felt like a site of public discourse. Even more so when the body is femme, grew up as a cis girl, of mixed heritage. Less so because the body is able-bodied, light-skinned, Chinese-passing, and cis-passing. The body -- and I say ‘the’ body instead of ‘my’ body because in analysing it, it rarely feels like my own -- is a crazed intersection of privileges, learned behaviours, unlearned truths and internalised value systems. Who owns the body? Who has a right to the body? When do these people have a right to the body? What is the body in the context of the self? What is the body in the context of society? What is the body in the context of other bodies? These are questions that, perhaps, can be trudged through in Scopus and JSTOR, but are really, honestly, best understood through turning inwards, thinking, and speaking quietly to the people who don’t necessarily wish to filter their experiences through the pipes of academia. Western academia feeds into the myth that the mind thinks, and the body follows. The genesis of an idea can never be in the doing -- it is in the conceptualising, the theorising, the thinking. So when we think about the body, we think of it as primal and lesser and full of instincts we must evaluate before following.

And even as I write this, I know that this essay is not exactly the anarchist anti-academia piece it wishes it was. Perhaps I am Southeast Asian, but I have been so colonised that my regional awareness is clinical, not cultural. I come from Singapore, which has been dubbed ‘the imperialist of Southeast Asia’ because of how passionately we suck the empire’s cock and try to distinguish ourselves from the rest of Southeast Asia. Last year, we celebrated the ‘Singapore Bicentennial’. What is that? It was a nationwide commemoration marking the 200th anniversary of Stamford Raffles’ arrival in Singapore. Raffles was the British son of a slave trader, whose arrival on our shores marked the beginning of our colonisation. So when I speak about the body outside an academic understanding of it, as much as I want it to be an ode to local, indigenous ways of understanding the body, I know it never will be.

So here is the first marker of my body: colonised, but also, coloniser. Literate, in someone else’s tongue. Literate in someone else’s tongue that, for most of my growing-up years, was indistinguishable from my own. 

This essay is self-serving. It’s not meant to be a great essay. There are millions of great essays out there by much more qualified people than I. All I want through this essay is a space in which my thoughts and feelings can visibly exist. I speak about my own body and my own feelings, and I understand that academia does not always enjoy these things. We are meant to be rational and disconnected, a voice displaced from personality. But again, perhaps academia is not the entity that needs to read this, and perhaps there is merit in writing about my own experiences and those of the people around me. If art is about externalising the internal, then here is my contribution.

The genesis of this project lay in my own tangled relationship with my body. I used to believe it was normal to be unable to perceive my body accurately -- after all, we drown in images of other people’s bodies on the daily, and we’re constantly told what our body should and shouldn’t look like. It was unsurprising to eleven-year-old me that the sight of my body in mirrors and photographs repulsed me. But the nonchalance turned to concern when the repulsion morphed into vivid hallucinations, also often centred on my body. They ranged from the mild (the body grows old, then it is a man, then it is my father) to the terrible (the skin on the body melts off flesh, exposing neon maggots within).

I wish I could package that discomfort neatly within my relationship with my gender. I wish I could make a broad, sweeping statement like, “once I acknowledged I was non-binary, the hallucinations stopped, and I felt more connected to my body” but this is wholly untrue. I’m sure, deep down, there is some connection between my gender trouble and my disconcerting grip on reality, but on the surface at least, the only thing they have in common is my body. And so this is where we begin - at the body. At my colonised, coloniser, dissociating, disconnected, immaterial, tangible, hallucinogenic, Queer body.

I think most of us begin to conceptualise the body as a space long before we find the words for it. We explore our bodies, trace topography, memorise shortcuts, collapse geography, navigate terrain. We know what goes where, what feels good, what hurts, what is part of our body and what is outside it. We create a distinction between our own bodies and other people’s bodies. Just as geography is not simply a matter of cartographic divisions, the borders between bodies are not simply physical. Our bodies and what they mean, where they are, bleed into each other in meaning and solidarity and sex and pain. How do we group some bodies together, decide the societal value of bodies based on similarities and differences? A friend named Ants points out that the body is not truly separate from the world around us - we are a microcosm of organisms and other things, the “edges” that cut us off from the air around us do not truly exist. Art teachers tell you to look at the world and recognise there are no lines -- this is true on a bodily level as well. This friend points out, ‘the notion of a “home” relies on the ability to invite in and to refuse entry - but actually wow humans are more permeable than we like to admit.’

This permeability goes beyond the physical entanglement of us and our surroundings. We are not the only ones residing in our bodies - we share the room with a thousand other people’s opinions of us, some more dangerous than others. Some bodies, the system has decided, do not belong to themselves. There is a lot to be said about the colonisation of the bodies of Black and Indigenous People of Colour (BIPOC) by the violence of white systems of power within which much of the world operates. There is also a lot to be said about the gentrification of our bodies to fit in, the policing of femme bodies by a patriarchal system, the cheapening and exploitation of some bodies, and the way some bodies must mortgage themselves to imposed power structures in order to survive.

If the body is a space, then capitalism wants to cut us all up into little bitty pieces and make sure each of our components is most efficiently and clinically used. And, as dystopic as this idea is, it has already been achieved. We all labour under capitalism, our bodies are broken and exploited (again, some more than others. Some much more than others.), and we all go to sleep only to wake up to do it again. When the world is constructed such that nothing belongs to you without capital, the body feels like precious real estate (or, conversely - the body feels incredibly fucking distant). We want agency over it, we want control over it, we want it back. We want to feel comfortable in our skin, so we pay a premium to make sure our physical, spiritual and emotional selves line up with the identity we have created for ourselves in our minds. We find ways to slide ourselves into our bodies, we look for things like connection and authenticity. We want our bodies to feel like home. And yet, the language we are given to talk about habitation of body, of space, corner us to think about our agency in very specific terms.

When we think about habitation, we think about the home. ‘Where do you live?’ is the same question as ‘where is your home?’ or, more transparently, ‘where is your house?’ Although the concept of home is arguably intangible, we find ways to ground it in a very material context. Linguistically, we position ‘home’ through idioms like ‘home is where the heart is’, ‘a man’s home is his castle’, ‘home ground’... The English language has developed a very extensive range of phrases that link ‘home’ to a sense of permanence, ownership and identity. This conceptual positioning of the home is mirrored in very tangible ways. We want to buy a house, not rent one. We have landlords who own our houses but do not live in them. We deliberately build walls, doors and locks to demarcate ‘our’ space. And ‘our’ space is defined mostly by the fact that it is not anybody else’s. 

We think of habitation in terms of property. It is not really surprising that England declared the legal definition of property in the 17th century, around the same time the colonial empire was established. Theorists like John Locke tried to naturalise the concept of ownership -- in the process, also cementing who was viewed as a person and who was not. Property is an inherently racist, sexist and problematic idea. And yet, we don’t view home ownership as the selfish offspring of imperialism (see: mass deaths and poverty). The home, by all means, is a warm, comforting concept. The home is where the heart is! The home is where we take off our bras, put on a stained shirt and dance arrhythmically to Diana Ross. It is a safe space, where we unfurl, exist without fear of being watched, exist without concern about acing the performance. The home is apolitical - you don’t have to have the right opinion when you are at home. You can just be.

Before thinkers like Proudhon, Marx, Lenin and Mao called for the abolition of private property, there were indigenous peoples who viewed the land as sacred, as living, as relatives and ancestors, who continue to view the land in this way. We do not own the land - we exist alongside it. In many ways, we owe our existence to it. In 2017, New Zealand’s Whanganui Maori iwi won a 140-year-long legal battle to give their ancestral Whanganui river the same legal rights as human beings. India’s Uttarakhand high court cited this case when it ruled that the Ganges River and the Yamuna River have the legal statuses of people. I’m going off on a tangent. The point is that before we dive into thinking that abolishing private property is a radical new thought, it is important we remember it is the age-old thought of the voices we have drowned out.

The relationships between land and humanity, between property and agency, between capitalism and the individual, are complex and political. So when I speak about the body as a site of habitation, there are thousands of unavoidable histories inherent. When I refer to the body as a home, that claim does not exist in a vacuum of happy thoughts and first-world identity crises. Bodies and land are both sites of violence and ownership - historically, they have been, and presently, they continue to be. I move away from describing the body as a ‘home’ because of the way I’ve unpacked it in this essay - but I also want to be clear that I am not trying to police the language we use to discuss our bodies, our relationship to the land, the spaces between us.

In my work, I spoke of the body as a habitat. A space, landmark, geographical love letter. The home is not a habitat, and vice versa. While ‘home’ conjures images of place and ownership, ‘habitat’ alludes to something more natural, more accidental. The space we end up in because it is best for us. The space that feeds us, shelters us and places us within a larger ecosystem of which we are an essential part. When I ask ‘how do we inhabit the body?’ I am not asking ‘how do we make the body a home?’ because the home has already been made for us. It is a question, then, not of altering the body to a point of marketability, but of peeling it back and returning to the state that feels the most comfortable.

So what does it mean to inhabit the body? What does it mean for Queer people whose bodies often feel inherently hostile? How do you slide into a body that, for one, does not feel like the body you want to slide into, and for another, does not feel like it belongs to you? How do you exist as a transgender and/or non-binary person whose body doesn’t feel like the habitat it is naturally supposed to be?

At this point in the essay, I got stuck. I messaged a friend saying, ‘I forgot what my point was.’ And was promptly reminded that I started this essay to de-intellectualise the relationship I have with my body. To feel my way through the words, rub out this idea that I have to have sources and academic knowledge to discuss my primary site of existence. If that was the point of this essay, then you and I both know I have failed. I’ve intellectualised the hell out of the body. And I realise a lot of us Queer people do this - we see the body as distant, so it is much easier to evaluate it without engaging directly with the sense of loss that comes with putting ourselves inside our bodies (not to mention the fact that most of us are rarely, if at all, inside our bodies). But perhaps this, too, is a Western approach to Queerness. I think of the thousands of indigenous cultures that treated Queerness as the norm until their land was colonised and their beliefs stamped out to make way for Western laws. Singapore’s ‘main’ ethnic groups and our indigenous peoples all have long histories of non-binary genders: from the five genders of the Bugis people to the gay Hainanese sex workers to the Malay sida-sida. Was gender ever supposed to be this complicated? Or are the complications a Western import? You can understand my rage with Western LGBTQIA+ activists who view Southeast Asian countries as ‘behind’. ‘Behind’ is a flaccid word coming from those who tread on us until we could no longer walk forward.

And yet, ‘behind’ is such an important position to us -- in Singapore, we want to be ahead. Myself, in my body, wants to be better, as if better is an absolute point that can be reached if I just do the right things, am the right type of person. ‘Better’ is a weird thing to want for a body that does not really feel like it belongs to you. Early in the morning, my mama chides me: ‘you’ll never know what it’s like to fight until you have your own children.’ and I think about the life that I fight to live and I wonder if that’s not real fighting because the body I am fighting for is so far removed from my soul, the soul that is trying its best to inhabit it. And again, what does it mean to try our best to inhabit a body? At what point have we succeeded in being?

This essay is maybe useless academically, but it is useful spiritually. Writing this piece has felt like detangling a very long clump of hair in a drain, spreading them out on wet tile bathed in sunlight and watching them dry til they curl back in on themselves. I am no longer interested in coherence. I am interested in this dissonance, the words I say versus the words I learned, the land I walk on versus the land taken away from me versus the land that was never really mine to begin with. The body as its own agent but so bounded by words and language and bullshit that I have to write an entire essay just to arrive at the point of: oh. Perhaps it is okay for all these feelings to be messy, to be just loosely strung together. Perhaps it is okay that the only thing that they have in common, is my body.

[satans-helper]

Hi! This might be a weird question, but given that you're such a great writer, I was wondering if you had any writing tips? For fiction and maybe for academic writing, since that seems to be too tedious to enjoy. I come to you from a place of respect and admiration, really! I am always marvelled at how you quite literally paint a picture in your writing (and I know you've gotten this compliment before, so you know you're doing something amazing!), and how deeply you portray emotion. Thank you :)

Wow, thank you so, so much! 💕💕 I always consider imagery to be my strongest skill with writing and I'm always overjoyed when it's acknowledged and appreciated.

I suppose for fiction, my first and arguably best tip is to read! Read all you can, all you want. I don't do enough of it these days but growing up, I read a LOT. And it helped to study English and writing, no doubt. Learning the basics of "proper" writing is crucial, even if you end up deviating a bit into more of an unconventional style.

I think for myself, much of my writing is centered around, quite often, a single visual or otherwise sensory experience. Fics and stories included. I become really fixated on specific images and moments in time and sometimes I feel totally compelled to write them. With all of my fanfics, GVF and otherwise, they came from a scene I had created in my mind that I truly could not relinquish without writing it. Once I write something, that scene or those images are free to move along. So a lot of the time, my writing is very compulsory. I guess what I could tell you with that is, if you feel something, write it. If you see something, write it. Even if what you produce never is seen by anyone else, you'll have it. There can never be enough writing in the world and, if you do choose to share your work, whether it be fan fiction or something else, I guarantee you at least one person will think it's brilliant.

As far as academic writing goes, I tended to enjoy it most of the time lol. But I was also studying and writing about literature, for the most part. I was rereading some of my past essays recently and I was like, damn! This is good stuff. But I know it can be super challenging and not always interesting. JSTOR, libraries and all the critical texts you can find are your friends. Don't be afraid to use other people's words, as long as you can apply critical thought of your own to them and build off of and around them. Academic writing can definitely be tedious, far more so if it's a topic that you don't find interesting. If you can become a better writer, even just in terms of mechanics, it will be easier for you.

And for all writing, especially creative, use other people's feedback when you can. Readers and writers alike, though I've always found it more helpful to get critical comments from other writers. The writing workshops I've taken throughout my life have been completely invaluable and I miss them often!

Sorry for the essay and thank you again so much! You are so exceptionally kind and truly made my night 🌲💕 I really hope this helps!